Open-Access Monographs: New Tools, More Access - Monica McCormick, EDUCAUSE Review

Beyond the multiple options for creating and disseminating open-access books in new forms, OA monograph publishing projects are driven by the value of releasing scholarship in forms that are free and available to anyone. We are in an era of significant change in the United States and Canada for publishing open-access (OA) scholarly monographs. The bulk of OA titles are older or out-of-print works, many funded by the Mellon/NEH Humanities Open Book (HOB) program, which enabled free access to backlist scholarly works. Under that program, about 2,500 books from 28 publishers are now OA. Meanwhile, new OA-only book publishers are, together with traditional scholarly presses and libraries, exploring innovative business models and technologies. Precise numbers of new OA books are hard to calculate. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2019/5/open-access-monographs-new-tools-more-access